Small but mighty.
Written: Feb 21 '03
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Pros: Cheap media, large storage space, small size
Cons: Slower than advertised downloads, clunky software.
The Bottom Line: This is something of a compromise from the mp3 market, but it has its strong points. The cheaper unit cost and media are both strong points in its favor.
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| bloolight's Full Review: Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N707 Personal MiniDisc Play... |
I'm no expert on the new-fangled music formats, so when I went out to the store to get an alternative to my aging CD walkman, I initially looked for mp3 players. My eye was caught, however, by the Sony NetMD player, primarily on the strength of its cheap media. Minidiscs are cool and quite cheap, and the player was about a hundred bucks cheaper than the mp3 player I had my eye on.
The player is quite cool looking, and seems very sturdy. It has tiny little buttons that can be a pain to use at times, but the remote helps fix some of these problems. For a unit as small as this, you have to expect tiny buttons. The LED screen is large enough, however, and is quite useful. The set came with a "car kit" including charger and tape-adapter.
The NetMD does not use mp3 format for its files. Rather, it uses a propietary format called "OpenMG" to compress files, although it will do this to mp3's quite easily. The software that comes with the player, called "OpenMG Jukebox" is quite confusing to use at first and I've heard a lot of people complain about it. Actually, I don't have much of a problem with it now that I've figured out all the little quirks. For one thing, you have to "check in/out" files to your player, and this is limited to three "check outs" before you have to put some files back into the program. This is an attempt to limit music piracy, but it really only puts an annoying obstacle in the way of would-be pirates. I, however, have had no problem with it so far.
The player can record files in three different levels of compression. The LP2 choice seems to be the best, providing decent fidelity along with good compression. With this level, you can squeeze about forty tracks onto a single disc. On LP4 I believe you can get five hours of music, but I wasn't too thrilled with the quality of the sound. The compression format does degrade the sound, as does the mp3 format, but its not terribly obvious to me.
The volume of the player is a bit weak, but it only runs on a single battery so I guess that's par for the course. Using it with a pair of buds rather than the crappy headphones included in the package helps. Better quality buds would improve the situation even more. In the car, it works great using the amplifier on the car's stereo.
The battery lasts forever, and the unit comes with a single rechargeable one as well as a nice little charger that the player can be easily plugged into. The player seems to charge quickly.
Loading files into the player doesn't occur at the 32X speed that is advertised. I'd say it probably happens at around 8㪧x with a USB 2.0 slot on my laptop. Not lightning-quick, but not too bad.
I'll probably buy an mp3 player with the mega-huge song capacity eventually, but for now I'm enjoying the cheap media costs and overall quality of the Sony player.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 199
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Epinions.com ID:
bloolight
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Reviews written: 121
Trusted by: 9 members
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